chinese convenience stores how are they
different from the convenience stores in
your country well the best thing is for
us to go inside a couple of these places
and actually see what they sell and see
the differences
i am going to warn you it's not what
you're used to back home although there
are big brand names here like 7-eleven
you will find out that they're actually
very different because of course they
have to cater to chinese tastes so
instead of just waffling on
let's go inside some of these
convenience stores and see what makes
chinese convenience stores different
well that's a familiar sight in the
background there seven eleven well you
know you have to be careful because i
have seen eight twelves and the like
here in china they do tend to like to
copy the logo but that does appear to be
a real one so how about we go in there
and take a look and see if it's exactly
the same as what you used to back home
well we've got all our
usual nut snacks and things
we
have our chicken in a bag
and this is something i do run into
occasionally here in china's it's kind
of like whenever i go to a um
i don't know into like a restaurant or a
shop
you know they don't like me filming
and
they don't mind me like
it's not about privacy
like in the west over here it's about
kind of stopping people from copying you
um well i mean like here's another
little
you know
here's another little convenience store
right here and you know it has a very
very similar appearance to a 7-eleven
you'll find that the layout inside is
probably very similar
and they have the same products etc etc
now what the lady in the shop actually
explained to me is that they are worried
about people
filming because they're worried about
people copying their products which
makes total sense this is china if you
set up any kind of a successful
restaurant or a successful business you
will get people going in there and
taking photos so that they can go and
reverse engineer and copy exactly what
you did so this is why i very often run
into the you can't film in here problem
but they won't mind like if you film
them it's no big deal people don't care
about their own sort of personal privacy
as i'm sure you notice in my videos
film whoever whatever no one cares but
you very often get shut down when you
try and film inside of shops and
restaurants anyway let's go find another
convenience store and see if we can get
away with filming inside
so
what we're going to do is we're going to
take a look at first uh it's uh some
kind of a normal everyday
sort of mom and pop homegrown
convenience store
and first thing you'll notice is that
there are a lot of local snacks
such as these chicken feet
with peppers which is kind of cool
um
and of course more chicken feet in a bag
but we also have our dried sort of fruit
selection which is very different to
what we're used to in the west
and for some reason there's a guy keeps
following me around so let me let me
show you
how's it going
cool
quite interesting huh
yeah anyway over here
this is a kind of a dry tofu snack and
you'll see there's a lot of snacks which
are very similar to that over here
all of this stuff is
chicken
river river crab
i mean river shrimp
okay we've also got some dirty sausages
as we like to call them which
you know this is really sort of mystery
meat sort of stuff
eat at your own risk
and this is something that's very
interesting that you'll always find in
chinese supermarkets sorry uh chinese
convenience stores is
water that is
not in the fridge
now you'll see these machines in every
single home around china you'll see them
in offices
and you'll see them well everywhere you
go and the reason is chinese people hate
cold water
now this goes back to the fact that in
chinese traditional medicine it's
believed that drinking cold water is
very bad for your chi
and especially if you are married to a
chinese woman or if you're dating a
chinese girl you will know how adamant
they are to not drink cold water when
they're on their period or if they're
sick at all even in the slightest
now
the cure-all in china the absolute
cure-all for any disease including
things such as ah no joke people will
say it doesn't matter how sick you are
just drink
hot water in fact i'm pretty sure
they'll say hey you got cancer no
problem drink hot water
that's just the way chinese people are
hot water is the cure all for every
single disease and that is why
it's so difficult to find cold water in
the restaurants here and it's so well
you can't buy ice nobody sells ice in
china you can't pick it up in any
convenience store or anything like that
so hot water is what you can expect
hot water is what like people like to
drink and that is why you'll find those
bottles of water outside of the fridge
because people actually will go into a
convenience store and refuse to buy cold
water
because they think it's bad for the
health now this machine for instance
this looks like it's cold water but it's
not this is actually just room
temperature there is no cooling unit
inside of this so you get room
temperature or you get piping hot that's
it
so if you're coming to china be prepared
to drink a lot of hot water
so as you can imagine there's all sorts
of different kinds of snacks here
chicken in a bag
guaza which is one of china's favorite
snacks which is basically just sunflower
seeds
trust me they love this stuff
and
on top you'll notice something very
interesting
alcohol lots and lots of different kinds
of baijio
which again is something that's pretty
interesting um
over here
a couple of little daily amenities that
you might need batteries toothbrushes
you know cables for your phone etc etc
which is kind of cool
and uh once again back on this side we
got more snacks
tons and tons of snacks
right oreo he likes oreos
okay so and where my friend is standing
over there
we have
of course the cold beer now this is kind
of cool this this particular one
actually has a lot of choice i mean
we've got like these pretty cool strong
alcohol
vodka kind of mixer things
eight percent rio yeah
and uh we got fake red bulls up there we
got real red bulls up there we've got
all sorts of different kinds of beer
which is really cool
all the way and in fact i'm very
impressed they even have the jack
daniels in cola you see this is not
something i'm used to in
these kinds of convenience stores
usually there isn't a lot of
choice
let's take a look at some very
um local sort of stuff
okay
the kind of thing you won't find
anywhere here we have the
bao which is the sort of chinese
yeah and this is kind of like a
medicinal tea they say and it's
something that you drink in summer
but to be honest it's just full of sugar
um what else do we have here
top eyes
and of course your usual sort of
drinks that you can expect to find
um however you'll see there's something
here for instance this apple cider
vinegar
sky ground number one basically
very popular drink here
[Music]
and yeah your various different kinds of
teas you know because this is something
that's very popular here as well all
these different kinds of teas
and uh you know this is like uh
obviously moli koata or there's green
tea and you've got your red bean tea and
all the different kinds of tea
okay
here of course we have the
all-important instant noodles which is a
mainstay of any
chinese convenience store along with
some more hard liquor up there by joe
and again over here we've got tons of
little
cakes and muffins and things these are
actually not very good to eat trust me
i've tried them all
and back to some more noodles
okay what else do we have
various different kind of sweetened milk
drinks
which you know there's jay cho very
popular taiwanese
singer and actor on there
and uh we do have ice creams and these
ice creams are a little weird i'm not
gonna lie
we got things like
uh green bean ice cream over here which
you know i don't know
if you like that
okay
and of course here we have our
always famous sort of uh beetle nuts and
that sort of thing okay
we do have some red wine up there
it's usually fairly fake but look at the
big wall of cigarettes because
cigarettes are
absolutely important to chinese culture
you cannot get away from cigarettes in
china and you have a huge selection and
they're very cheap
very very cheap for smokers i'm sure
you'll love it
and of course yes we do actually have
condoms over here which is useful but um
yeah i know i've had a lot of my foreign
friends myself included complain a
little bit about the sizes that are
available here but let's not get into
that
over here we have various different
kinds of chocolates etc etc
and of course up at the front we
actually do have something pretty cool
which is uh
food that you can just order kind of
ready-made food things like
little meatballs little bits of chicken
things like that this is very common
especially the little fish bowls
i think it's kind of cool and kind of
interesting you can buy these
and it's kind of like fast food on the
go
so guys this more or less brings us to
the end of this convenience store video
but there are a couple of things we have
to talk about and you may recognize this
gent over here gary
so gary you've been here now how long
i've been here for
um better part of three weeks excellent
you may yeah you may remember sorry to
cut you off you may remember gary from
the are chinese americans
oh sorry our american chinese chinese
link to the video up in that little
corner of the screen but anyway he's
been here we're going to catch up we're
going to do a follow-up video on one of
these days before you leave yeah yeah
and uh you've been going to some of
these convenience stores so as an
outsider what's your initial perspective
and what do you think about these
well i thought they are on they're
ubiquitous on every corner and even
midway through a block you know there's
if it's not 7 11 there's copies of 7 11.
and
so and but they all have their different
flavor they're all tiny and they offer
convenience
so
from a convenience standpoint if you
don't know what you're looking for there
that's a good place to start yeah i mean
you've got them everywhere so they are
easy to find but what about the actual
choice i mean if you compare it to like
a gas station shop in america right like
what would you say about the choice of
products that you have
well if you're compared to a gas station
the smaller gas stations is probably the
choices are limited just the same as in
those small gas station shops but if
they're
you know they're getting bit in the
states are getting bigger and bigger so
you get a lot of choices from all your
favorite drinks to all your favorite
snacks yeah here they're i found they
tend to be small so your
your um choices are smaller yeah and
limited yeah
yeah for sure now the shops that i
showed you in this video are
actually about the best that you get in
china unfortunately this is a first tier
city even that little mom and pop one
that i went into has got way more choice
than most of the convenience stores that
i've been into around china
one thing you can be guaranteed is that
you'll always find baijo you know that
cheap you've had it before yeah yeah
yeah yeah what did you just knock it on
me yeah what did you think of that well
after i picked myself off the floor it
was pretty good
yeah so you can get baijo you will
always be able to get cigarettes and a
host of different kinds of chinese
snacks but that's pretty much where it
ends and you know the further out of the
big cities you go the less choice you
get
so um
only expect to see what you saw in this
video in the bigger cities so there's a
bit of a warning for you guys out there
anyway so um that's the end of this
video i will be next time i go out into
the rural sticks i will specifically
film inside
a rural convenience store for all of you
guys to see because they do have some
different choices and uh it'll be
interesting to see until next time guys
i guess uh no matter where we are no
matter what you're doing
stay awesome
you